Episode 433: Tolkien’s interest in dinosaurs and how it shaped his writing. Professor John Holmes—who recently re-enacted Tolkien’s 1938 dinosaur presentation in full—joins us to share how Tolkien used his knowledge of dinosaurs while writing The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit.

News:

• A new study shows that dinosaurs weren’t declining before the asteroid impact, but a shift in which herbivores were most important in their ecosystems may have made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction source
• Scientists found that climate may have affected the early evolution of dinosaurs including how and where they lived source

Interview:

John Holmes, Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham. He is an expert on the Gothic Revival and the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He recently recreated Tolkien’s 1938 Christmas lecture ‘On Dragons’ which featured several dinosaurs from Oxfordshire. He is also on the committee for the Symbiosis Network which seeks to spark collaborations between museums, researchers and artists. Check out their YouTube playlist here.

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Image by Alexoatss

The dinosaur of the day: Atlasaurus

• Sauropod that lived in the Middle Jurassic in what is now Azilal Province, Morocco (Guettioua Formation)
• Looked somewhat like Brachiosaurus, with an upright neck
• Closely related to Brachiosaurus, with similarities in the vertebral column and limbs
• But different from Brachiosaurus, with a proportionately larger skull, a shorter neck, longer tail, and longer limbs
• About 15 million years older than Brachiosaurus
• Authors that named Atlasaurus described it as a moderately large, adult sauropod with unusually long forelimbs and moderately long hindlimbs
• Skull is large, neck is short, tail is long, and the limbs are very long
• Found at least 13 neck vertebrae
• Neck was about 12.7 ft (3.86 m) long
• Estimated to be about 49 ft (15 m) long and weigh 22.5 metric tonnes
• Had spoon-shaped teeth
• Type species is Atlasaurus imelakei
• Fossils found in 1981, a nearly complete skeleton with a skull
• Described in 1999 by Monbaron, Russell, and Taquet
• Genus name means “Atlas lizard”
• Genus name refers to the Atlas Mountains, where the fossils were found, as well as its size. Atlas Mountains named after the Titan Atlas, who held up the sky
• Species name means “giant” in Arabic
• According to the 1999 paper, “The relative completeness of the skeleton suggests that the animal was borne away and drowned in a flood, then caught on an oxbow or meander and rapidly covered by fluvial sediments mixed with vegetation”, which partially protected it (though theropod teeth were found nearby and associated with the skeleton)
• A second specimen with a nearly complete tail was found in Morocco in the 1980s, that took 300 hours to clean and prepare
• Second specimen ended up in Mexico and was on display in the lobby of BBVA Bancomer tower in Mexico City
• Then in 2018 it was auctioned off to an anonymous businessman, to help pay to rebuild some of the 5,000 schools that were damaged in the 2017 Puebla earthquakes, which killed 480 people and caused billions of dollars in damage
• Tail was about 13 ft (4 m) long and weighed 396 lb (180 kg), and was about 70% complete
• Tail was to be auctioned at a reserve price of about $95,805 USD, and if it sold for more, anything over the reserve price was to go to the schools
• Ended up selling for about $96,000 to $97,000 USD (though some sites said the final sale price was unknown)
• At least one article suggested about $21,500 USD ended up being donated
• After the auction, authorities in Morocco opened an inquiry about how the tail ended up in Mexico (if it was legally exported or not)
• The Head of Morocco’s cultural heritage department Abdellah Alaoui said they would repatriate the fossil
• First they contacted the auction house to confirm the seller was legally allowed to sell the fossil
• Said it that was the case they would buy the fossil back from the new owner and bring it back to Morocco
• If that wasn’t the case, the Moroccan embassy in Mexico City would use a specific procedure to cancel the sale and repatriate the fossil
• In 2017, Morocco had successfully removed a plesiosaur that came from Morocco from an auction in Paris
• Turns out the tail was sold to an unspecified agency
• The auction house, Morton, said the tail was acquired from the Petra Gallery, which said the fossil was legally purchased in the U.S.
• Couldn’t find an update on what ultimately happened
• Interestingly, it’s illegal to sell fossils in Mexico that were found in Mexico (but can sell fossils found in other countries)
• Featured in the 2002 documentary published by Discovery Channel, Tracking Africa’s Dinosaurs

Fun Fact:

There aren’t any “living fossil” species that have survived since the Mesozoic.

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